Why Do We Need a Belief in God with Michael Shermer

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Michael Shermer is the author of The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies---How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths. He is also the founding publisher of Skeptic Magazine, the executive director of the Skeptics Society, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, the host of the Skeptics Distinguished Science Lecture Series at Caltech and an adjunct professor at Claremont Graduate University.

Michael has written 15 books, including Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time; How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God; The Mind of the Market: How Biology and Psychology Shape Our Economic Lives; and Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design.

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[rcreative1]

I always enjoy listening to Michael Shermer. I call it Shermericity.

[AndyDOHD1]

Excellent book, and I had it autographed too. As a former PhD scientist with 2 under 5yo kids, I crave rational thinking, and trying to teach this to my kids as they grow. Already my 5yo is aware we came from atoms and go back to atoms, and that there is no heaven. No wonder the theologians want to get their deceptive ideals into our kids!

[AndyDOHD1]

@pillsareyummy ok.

[pillsareyummy]

@AndyDOHD1 I'm an Atheist to the God(s) of religion, I'm agnostic to the possibility of an 'intelligence' behind the universe, or other universes if they exist (call it God if you wish), simply because it's something that I can't prove or disprove. My views are similar to Bertrand Russell's in that regard. Again, stating that there isn't a heaven (the concept of heaven, not the Abrahamic, or any other interpretation), is as 'fundamentalist' as the religious person who says that there is one.

[AndyDOHD1]

@pillsareyummy So better to mislead children with the delusion of there being a heaven because we have cannot disprove its existence? With this argument we may tell them that there are fairies, Valhalla, an endless list, as we have no proof of non-existnce. Authority in science is peer review, and confidence limits to statistics support our knowledge of scientific fact, the scientific theory being the best explanaton for the OBSERVED phenomena with the availabe evidence.

[pillsareyummy]

@AndyDOHD1 I don't think it's right to tell children that there is no heaven. As an Atheist, I don't 'believe' in heaven either, however I can't know for certain that there isn't one. It's best to teach others to ask for evidence for any given claim, and base their beliefs on that evidence, However, with that being said, ALL belief,at least at present, is tentative. There are no authorities in science, or any other domain of knowledge. Absolutism is wrong, for the Atheist and Theist alike.

[RottingCorpse100]

The "predator in the grass" that the religions are using is hell which supposedly happens after death so you can't apply the process of natural selection to it. The only justification for people believing in god is stupidity or ignorance.

[proudhug]

"A dangerous predator is an intentional agent and he intends to eat me. And that can't be good ... So in a way, God is like that."

[thisisreef]

BULLSHIT!

[nickleus1977]

01:53 "we are the decendants of those who were best at finding these meaninful patterns with the default rule of thumb that all rustles in the grass are dangerous predators" =)